The field of the invention relates to telephony and more particularly to communication devices for the hearing impaired.
Telecommunication devices for hearing impaired people are generally known. Such devices are typically structured as computer terminals, which may be coupled electrically or acoustically to a telephone line.
Telecommunication devices for the hearing impaired are typically used in conjunction with relaying services that may be offered to the hearing impaired by a local public switched telephone network free of charge. Typically, an agent of the relaying service sits at a terminal and relays messages from a hearing impaired client to the non-hearing impaired.
For example, if the hearing impaired client were to want a pizza, he would couple his terminal to a telephone line and dial the relaying service. Upon detecting a connection with the agent, the hearing impaired client would type, xe2x80x9cI want a pizza.xe2x80x9d The sentence xe2x80x9cI want a pizzaxe2x80x9d would appear on the terminal of the agent. The agent, in turn, may type on his keyboard xe2x80x9cWhere do you want it ordered from?xe2x80x9d The hearing impaired person may respond by typing the name and location of the source. In response, the agent may pick up his telephone and dial the designated pizza place and then act as a verbal intermediary in the process of ordering a pizza.
The relaying service typically provides two telephone lines for each agent. The first line connects a terminal of the agent with the terminal of the hearing impaired client through the public switched telephone network. The second telephone line may be used by the agent to contact third parties at the request of the client.
Communication between the terminal of the hearing impaired client and agent may occur under any of a number of different protocols (e.g., Baudot, ASCII, Turbocode, etc.). Further, upon getting a call from a client, an agent may not know a priori what type of protocol will be used. As a consequence, an agent may need to sequentially decode an incoming data stream using each possible protocol until he finds one that works for the calling client.
While existing methods of providing call relaying services for the hearing impaired works relatively well, the method is unnecessarily complex and expensive to operate. Each agent requires at least two telephone lines. Where a call relaying service has many agents, many telephone lines are required. Further, during slow periods many of the lines may remain idle. Because of the importance of helping the hearing impaired, a need exists for a more efficient method for relaying calls of the hearing impaired.
A method and apparatus are provided for relaying text between a hearing impaired person and a third arty through the public switched telephone network. The method includes the steps of converting the text between a multifrequency textual format on the public switched telephone network and a packet format on a local area network and exchanging the text with the hearing impaired person through the local area network.